Beyond the Browser: Technologies to Watch

The Internet is not the World Wide Web. So what exactly lies beyond the browser? Eisenberg fearlessly predicts technologies to watch.

Eisenberg, J. David. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Web Design>Technology>Web Browsers

Big, Stark and Chunky

Research shows that low-vision people need dramatically different web design. CSS lets you give them what they need.

Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2005). Design>Web Design>Accessibility

Breaking out of the Cubicle: How a Small, Swiss Company Got its Groove On

In the mid-1990s, Makiko Itoh and her partner left New York's cubicle land for a web shop of their own in the suburbs of Zurich. Learn from her tips on running your own web agency.

Itoh, Makiko. List Apart, A (2001). Careers>Management>Web Design

Build a "Send to a Friend" Page

In this quick 'n easy tutorial, Short shows how to increase the popularity of your site by building a simple 'Send to Friend' form in HTML and ASP.

Short, Daniel. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Web Design>Forms>ASP

Build a Cross-Platform Web Design Testing Station in Mac OS

Everybody talks about cross–platform testing, but nobody’s shown how to do it on a nuts–and–bolts level. Until now. Sciortino’s comprehensive tutorial for Mac–based web designers will set you up with the testing platform of your dreams. (’Nix and Windows users, we hope to do the same for you in a future issue.)

Sciortino, Paul. List Apart, A (2002). Articles>Usability>Web Design

Build a PHP Switcher

ALA's open source style sheet switchers are swell so long as your visitors use compliant browsers and have JavaScript turned on. But what if they don’t? New ALA author Chris Clark tells how to build a cross-browser, backward-compatible, forward-compatible, standards-compliant style sheet switcher in just five lines of code.

Clark, Chris. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>Server Side Includes>PHP

Build a Search Engine in PERL

Everything you wanted to know about using PERL to build a simple search engine for your site (but were afraid to ask).

Ryan, Joseph. List Apart, A (2002). Articles>Web Design>Search

Bulleted Lists: Multi-Layered Fudge

A passion for web standards can become a broken heart when effects that are easy to achieve with table layouts seem to defy the earnest CSS- and markup-conscious designer. Fortunately, new ALA author Nandini Doreswamy loves a challenge. Here she shows how to create two columns of bulleted lists in the flow of text.

Doreswamy, Nandini. List Apart, A (2005). Design>Web Design>CSS

Business Entity Options

You've mastered Photoshop, Flash, PHP, CSS, XHTML and JavaScript; studied usability, accessibility, and information architecture; and can fake your way through XML. But there’s more to running a web business than that.

Kramer, Scott. List Apart, A (2002). Careers>Management>Web Design

Bye, Bye EMBED

Break the chains of EMBED and live free. Elizabeth Casto explains how to embed movies without using invalid markup.

Castro, Elizabeth. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>XHTML

Calling All Designers: Learn to Write!

You know all that copy that goes around your forms and in your confirmation e-mails? Who’s writing it? Derek Powazek explains why it’s important for user-interface designers to sharpen up their writing skills.

Powazek, Derek. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>User Interface>Writing

A Case for Web Storytelling

In our attention to style and technology, we often overlook a vital element in the web design mix: narrative voice.

Cloninger, Curt. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Web Design>Rhetoric

Cheaper Over Better: Why Web Clients Settle for Less

Schumacher explains why clients hire bad web designers (and what good web designers can do about it).

Schumacher, Adam. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Web Design>Consulting

A Child's Garden of XML

Sooner or later, most web designers will be called upon to create an internal site. And will quickly learn that one's own company can be tougher to deal with than any client. Dave Linabury offers tips on surviving the process (and building something good in spite of it).

St. Laurent, Simon. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Web Design>XML

Circle Jerks

Recently, on several well-known community and personal sites, familiar cries were heard: 'A is a sellout. B, C, and D are much better than X, Y, and Z. N, O, and P are overrated, back-scratching link whores.' The web design community goes through this kind of self-examination every three months. Under the banner of honest criticism, names are named, guesses about motivation are sketched, and sometimes entire bodies of work are dismissed. Useful and reasonable criticism is often advanced in these debates. But too frequently it is overshadowed by those with the loudest voices, whose anger can sound like passionate truth to those who've nurtured similar thoughts but been afraid to express them publicly. Undoubtedly some people sell out, some are overrated, and some use links merely to advance their careers or promote their friends. But even when the accused are guilty as charged, the accusations change nothing—they simply create turmoil.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2001). Articles>Content Management

Clickthru Is Evil II

Ten years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the web. Five years ago, advertisers started discovering it. Now they are poised to wreck it. Double-Click’s poison cookie has Alan Herrell foaming at the mouth as he explains why Clickthru is Evil.

Herrell, Alan. List Apart, A (2000). Articles>Web Design>Marketing

The Client Did It: A WWW Whodunit

Why is it that we allow ourselves to be put in a compromising position where the client tells us how to be web designers? Maybe it's because the perception among the wider public is that 'anyone' can make a website. And they're right. Anyone can make a website--but not everyone can make an emotionally engaging interactive experience that will live in the visitor's memory. (Similarly, anyone with access to a photocopier and a stapler can 'make a book,' but good books are scarce.)

Shepherd, Robbie. List Apart, A (2000). Careers>Consulting>Web Design

Community Creators, Secure Your Code!

Don’t be like MySpace. Protect your community site from malicious cross-site scripting attacks.

Bivald, Niklas. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Security>Ajax

Community Creators, Secure Your Code! Part II

In part one of this two-part series, we discussed the threat of cross-site scripting in general terms and introduced a number of important security concepts. In part two, we’ll take a more in-depth, hands-on approach: How does an attacker actually exploit the weaknesses found? How can you protect yourself? For reasons of length, we’ll limit our discussion to two specific, representative examples.

Bivald, Niklas. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Security>Ajax

Community: From Little Things, Big Things Grow

Any community—online or off—must start slowly, and be nurtured. You cannot “just add community.” It must be cared for, and hosted; it takes time and people with great communication skills to set the tone and tend the conversation.

Oates, George. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Complex Dynamic Lists: Your Order Please

Help your site’s visitors reach their goals quickly with a dynamic menu that takes its cue from the Mac OS X Finder.

Heilmann, Christian. List Apart, A (2005). Design>Web Design>User Interface>DHTML

Content Management Systems and the Single Web Designer

Content Management is the next step in separating structure from design. What began with Cascading Style Sheets and was furthered by XML, is exploding with the CM environment, where billions were spent last year and more billions are expected to be spent in the years ahead. CM Systems come in many shapes: They can be huge or small, simple or very complex. They range from the very expensive (almost $300,000 for enterprise–wide systems like Vignette or Interwoven and $43,000 per server processor for Microsoft’s CMS to almost free (less than $1,000 for Manila and nothing for Zope). But they are all based on the same idea: CM allows designers to focus on design by building templates. Subject experts build content in a separate environment. The server takes the content, inserts it into the correct template and sends it all, neatly wrapped up, to end users.

Ellis, James. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Content Management>Web Design

Contrast and Meaning

Design is largely an exercise in creating or suggesting contrasts in an effort to convey meaning.

Rutledge, Andy. List Apart, A (2007). Design>Document Design>Theory

Creating Liquid Layouts with Negative Margins

Two- and three-column, liquid page designs with header and footer are easy to dash off using old-school HTML table layout methods. Designing them in CSS is trickier, and can sometimes even require you to structure your page’s content elements in a specific (and undesirable) order. Negative margins to the rescue! Ryan Brill whips up two quick CSS layouts to demonstrate the power of negative thinking.

Brill, Ryan. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>CSS

Creating More Using Less Effort with Ruby on Rails

The “why” of Ruby on Rails comes down to productivity, says Michael Slater. Web applications that share three characteristics—they’re database-driven, they’re new, and they have needs not well met by a typical CMS—can be built much more quickly with Ruby on Rails than with PHP, .NET, or Java, once the investment required to learn Rails has been made. Does your web app fall within the RoR “sweet spot?”

Slater, Michael. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Server Side Includes>Ruby on Rails